'Gravity' could win Best Picture, but it would be the first sci-fi movie to do so.

With a clear nod to the fact that no sci-fi movie has ever won Best Picture at the Oscars, the director of 'Gravity', Alfonso Cuaron, has claimed his stunning 3-D epic starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney is actually more of a "drama of a woman in space," just days before the Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles.

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Cuaron is the big favorite to win best director, though the space movie could still snag the big one away from Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave.

"To be honest, I never thought I was doing a science fiction movie," Cuaron told the BBC, "I thought I was doing a drama of a woman in space."

The Mexican director added: "I don't think the film is a science fiction film in the sense that it takes place in the present with technology that exists.

"We heighten the reality because obviously there are plausibility issues, but I'm happy with whichever label [it has]."

Gravity has made more than $700m (£420m) at the worldwide box-office and has been roundly praised for his ground-breaking 3-D visuals.

George Clooney in Alfonso Cuaron's 'Gravity'

With that said, even though the Academy appreciates technical advancements in cinema, it has been unwilling to reward sci-fi/space movies with best picture.

The original Star Wars lost the best picture prize to Woody Allen's Annie Hall.

Big-budget Avatar lost out to low-budget bomb drama The Hurt Locker and Inception was pretty much ignored, in favour of The King's Speech.

"I guess there's a connotation that science fiction lacks gravitas," said Cuaron. "But you have 2001 [A Space Odyssey] and I don't think you can go more serious than that."